Book Bits #135 – ‘Film School,’ writers’ tips, book news

In today’s links, a very sobering assessment of Amazon and the crumbling state of the book business from The Authors Guild. With new authors so enamored of anything that gets back at old line publishing, I fear that nobody is listening in spite of the Amazon as predator headlines we’ve been seeing of late.

1. Viewpoint: Publishing’s Ecosystem on the Brink: The Backstory – “Subtlety is out. Bloomberg Businessweek’s January 25th cover shows a book engulfed in flames. The book’s title? ‘Amazon Wants to Burn the Book Business.’” – The Authors Guild
2. News: Jamie Raab Interview Sparks eBook Royalty Debate, by Maryann Yin  – “In the interview, Raab defended her imprint’s standard practice of giving authors a 25% royalty rate for eBooks: ‘We have an infrastructure to support.’ She outlined the values of what traditional publishers have to offer whether they are new in their writing career or established New York Times bestselling authors.” – Galleycat
3. Review: Below Stairs, The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired Upstairs, Downstairs and and Downton Abbey, by Margaret Powell – “Oh sure, the life of a kitchen-maid was all about drudgery and humiliation, but Margaret Powell lets you know right away that there is more to her character than beaten-down servitude. ” – BookBrowse
4. News: Taslima’s book released despite protests, by Ananya Dutta – “A major controversy broke out at the 36th Kolkata International Book Fair when a book written by Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen was not allowed to be released at the venue. The book Nirbasan (Exile) was to have been released at an auditorium inside the premises but the organisers of the Book Fair cancelled it at the eleventh hour.” – The Hindu
5. Viewpoint: Stories don’t need morals or messages, by Laura Miller – “A ‘stupid’ test shows that the Puritan ethic lives on. Why do we insist on learning lessons from the books we read?” - Salon
6. Contest: Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, deadline February 29, prize $1,5000 plus publication – “Most submissions run 1,500 to 6,000 words, but can go up to 12,000.”
7. Feature: Mystery Writers Awards–Left Coast Crime–The Lefty, by Diane Plumley – “Left Coast Crime is an annual mystery convention sponsored by mystery fans, for mystery fans. It is held during the first quarter of the calendar year in Western North America, as defined by the Mountain Time Zone and all time zones westward to Hawaii.” This year’s Left Coast Crime will be in Sacramento, California March 29 to April 1. – The Bookshop Blog
8. Essay: Dystopia And The Hunger Games: Bring Up Your Full Moon - “I was a bit surprised when my daughter Emma recommended that I read “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, as it is not really the kind of novel either of us generally read. The Dystopian thing is huge, growing and creative, but I have not been drawn to it. It seems too much like it’s mother, the news.” – Bedlam Farm Journal
9. News: ‘CSI: NY’ Star to Launch Press for Children, by Judith Rosen – “Bestselling author Hill Harper, who portrays Dr. Sheldon Hawkes on CSI: NY, is launching a multicultural children’s publishing house, Harper & Wells Books, with teen author Pamela Wells in February.” – Publishers Weekly
10. Writer’s How To: Creating The Fictional Family: No character is an island, by Yelizaveta P. Renfro – “Every character comes from somewhere. Creating a family history and historical setting can add great depth to writing. Below I offer a number of exercises for creating relationships among characters in linked short stories or longer works.” – Glimmer Train Bulletin
11. New Titles: Get ready for “Saturday Night Live”: the comic book, by Kimberly Potts – “Live, from Vancouver, it’s “COMICS: Saturday Night Live,” a 24-page history of the long-running show in comic book form.” – Reuters
12. Review: The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict, by Trenton Lee Stewart, illustrated by Diana Sudyka – “Meet Nicholas Benedict, a skinny nine-year-old orphan with a lumpy nose, an extraordinary intellect, and an inconvenient tendency to fall asleep when he is excited. Newly arrived at his latest orphanage (Rothchild’s End, ominously shortened to ’Child’s End), Nicholas quickly learns to avoid the Spiders (a gang of bullies) as best he can. ” – Booklist
13. News: More People are Visiting Newspaper Websites, by Felicia Pride – “According to an analysis of comScore data performed by the Newspaper Association of America, newspaper websites in the fourth quarter of 2011 averaged more than 111 million monthly unique visitors, an increase of more than 6 million compared with the same period a year ago. ” – FishbowlNY
14. News: Poland’s 1996 Nobel poet Szymborska dies at 88 – “Poland’s 1996 Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, whose simple words and playful verse plucked threads of irony and empathy out of life, has died. She was 88. Szymborska, a heavy smoker, died in her sleep of lung cancer Wednesday evening at her home in the southern city of Krakow, her personal secretary Michal Rusinek said. ” – Associated Press
15. Interview: James Patterson’s ‘Nevermore’: Cover reveal, plus Q and A, by Brian Truitt – “My big thing here with all of these books is to get more and more kids reading. I do have an ulterior motive here, and that’s my mission. The more kids read, the better they get at it, and for a lot of kids the best way to get them reading is to give them a story that they really can get into. They get into The Hunger Games and they get into Maximum Ride.” – USA Today
16. Feature: Little Landscapes of Daintiness and Elegance, by Laine Farley – Three old bookmarks remind us how we kept out place before Kindle. “These three bookmarks illustrate a Janus-like view of the past year with a fall scene and a Christmas greeting and an anticipation of going forward into spring with an Easter theme. The appeal of these bookmarks is not so much about the seasonal themes as it is the quality of the engravings. The scenes are also unusual and non-traditional, at least in terms of modern expectations. ” BiblioBuffet
17. Essay: Getting a Grip, by Jessa Crispin – “Getting a grip is such an interesting image. Your hands wrapped around something, hanging on for dear life. But also, it looks like strangling.” Crispin suggests “no book, I think, has captured that terror and the pain of readjusting better than ‘Metropole.’” – Kind Reader at Barnes & Noble Review
18. Lists: 50 Musical Terms Used in Nonmusical Senses by Mark Nichol – “Have you noticed how many terms for musical phenomena have been adopted into general discourse? Sometimes it’s difficult to determine whether the musical term was later associated with a general definition, or whether the general usage came first, but take note of these musically derived or related words.” – Daily Writing Tips
19. Feature: A Self-Help Rights Guide for Independent Publishers, by Amanda DeMarco – “If you’ve ever signed a contract for a book, as an author, a publisher, or a translator, do you know why it stipulated the terms that it did? Are you certain that it was the best contract for the book? And not the best contract for making money now, but for the long-term success of the book, of your literary legacy, of your organization?” – Publishing Perspectives
20. News: B&N Discover Great New Writers Finalists – For fiction, Volt by Alan, Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante and Untouchable by Scott O’Connor. For nonfiction Day of Honey by Annia Ciezadlo, [sic] by Joshua Cody and Kosher Chinese by Michael Levy. The first place prize is $10,000. Winners will be announced March 7. – Shelf Awareness
21. Review: Steve Boman tells tales from ‘Film School’ at USC - “In ‘Film School,’ what doesn’t kill USC graduate student Steve Boman makes for an entertaining book.” – The Los Angeles Times
22. News: In Chicago, Powell’s Books to replace University Village Barbara’s Bookstore; New shop slated to open March 1 – “Less than a month after University Village’s Barbara’s Bookstore closed its doors, citing weak sales and poor foot traffic, a Chicago-based bookstore chain is moving into the space at 1218 S. Halsted St.” – Chicago Journal

“Book Bits” is compiled six days a week by Malcolm R. Campbell, author of the contemporary fantasy “Sarabande” from Vanilla Heart Publishing (August, 2011).

If your book club or class is considering discussing “Sarabande,” you’ll find some starter questions and resources here.